Currently, Canadian Natural owns and operates 100% of the Primrose Oil Sands Project ("the project"), located approximately 55 km north of Bonnyville in northeastern Alberta. The Project includes the production of bitumen from Primrose North, South, East and Wolf Lake areas. Since the bitumen is not mobile under reservoir conditions, it can only be recovered through the in situ operation of injecting heat, in the form of steam, to mobilize the bitumen. Both cyclic steam stimulation ("CSS") and steam assisted gravity drainage ("SAGD") are recovery technologies currently employed in the project and have the capability of producing more than 120,000 barrels of bitumen per day. Canadian Natural will continue to develop within the project to utilize this developed production capacity.
In addition to the Primrose Oil Sands Project, Canadian Natural has vast land holdings of oil sands rights within the Athabasca Oil Sands Area. Our thermal in situ oil sands plan is to add ~40,000 bbl/d of additional bitumen capacity in a phased project execution strategy every 2 - 3 years as we strive for a target of approximately 500,000 barrels of bitumen per day. Canadian Natural is the driver of this plan as we own and operate 100% of the plan. The first project in the plan is the Kirby South Phase 1 SAGD project which was approved by the board and regulatory bodies in Q4 2010 and is currently under construction. Following Kirby South Phase 1, the growth plan is to continue with the development of the remaining thermal in situ oil sands properties including but not limited to: Kirby North Phase 1, Grouse, Kirby North Phase 2, Kirby South Phase 2, Birch Mountain East Phase 1 and Gregoire Phase 1 projects.
